mechanoreception, ability of an animal to detect and respond to certain kinds of stimuli—notably touch, sound, and changes in pressure or posture—in its environment.

Sensitivity to mechanical stimuli is a common endowment among animals. In addition to mediating the sense of touch, mechanoreception is the function of a number of specialized sense organs, some found only in particular groups of animals. Thus, some mechanoreceptors act to inform the animal of changes in bodily posture, others help detect painful stimuli, and still others serve the sense of hearing.

Slight deformation of any mechanoreceptive nerve cell ending results in electrical changes, called receptor or generator potentials, at the outer surface of the cell; this, in turn, induces the appearance of impulses (“spikes”) in the associated nerve fibre. Laboratory devices such as the cathode-ray oscilloscope are used to record and to observe these electrical events in the study of mechanoreceptors. Beyond this electrophysiological approach, mechanoreceptive functions are also investigated more indirectly—i.e., on the basis of behavioral responses to mechanical stimuli. These responses include bodily movements (e.g., locomotion), changes in respiration or heartbeat, glandular activity, skin-colour changes, and (in the case of man) verbal reports of mechanoreceptive sensations. The behavioral method sometimes is combined with partial or total surgical elimination of the sense organs involved. Not all the electrophysiologically effective mechanical stimuli evoke a behavioral response; the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) acts to screen or to select nerve impulses from receptor neurons.

Man experiences sharp, localized pain as a result of stimulation of “pain spots” (probably free nerve endings) in the skin, and dull pain, usually difficult to localize, associated with inner organs. The sensory structures of pain spots in the skin differ from other receptors in that they respond to a wide range of harmful (noxious or nociceptive) stimuli. Excessive stimulation of any kind (e.g., mechanical, thermal, or chemical) may produce the human experience of pain. Apart from eliciting this subjective feeling of pain, stimulation of pain receptors in the human skin is objectively characterized by such signs of emotional expression as weeping and by efforts to withdraw from the stimulus. The reflex withdrawal of his hand from a burning stimulus may begin even before the person becomes conscious of the pain sensation.

Judging from objective criteria, responses to painful stimuli also occur in nonhuman animals, but, of course, any subjective experience of pain sensation cannot be directly reported. Still, the question of painful experience among animals is of considerable interest because investigators (e.g., medical researchers) are often obliged to subject laboratory animals to treatments that would elicit complaints of pain from a man. If a cat’s tail is accidentally stepped on, the pitiful screeching and efforts to withdraw are so strikingly similar to human reactions that the observer is led to attribute the experience of pain to the animal. If one treads accidentally on an earthworm and observes the animal’s apparently desperate struggles to get free, he might again be inclined to suppose that the worm feels pain. This sort of “mind reading,” however, is inherently uncertain and may be grossly misleading.

The following observations illustrate some of the difficulties in making judgments of the inner experiences of creatures other than man. After the spinal cord of a fish has been cut, the front part of the animal may respond to gentle touch with lively movements, whereas the trunk, the part behind the incision, remains motionless. A light touch to the back part elicits slight movements of the body or fins behind the cut, but the head does not respond. A more intense (“painful”) stimulus, however (for instance, pinching of the tail fin), makes the trunk perform “agonized” contortions, whereas the front part again remains calm. To attribute pain sensation to the “painfully” writhing (but neurally isolated) rear end of a fish would fly in the face of evidence that persons with similarly severed spinal cords report absolutely no feeling (pain, pressure, or whatever) below the point at which their cords were cut.

Aversive responses to noxious stimuli nevertheless have a major adaptive role in avoiding bodily injury. Without them, the animal may even become a predator against itself; bats and rats, for instance, chew on their own feet when their limbs are made insensitive by nerve cutting. Some insects normally show no signs of painful experience at all. A dragonfly, for example, may eat much of its own abdomen if its tail end is brought into the mouthparts. Removal of part of the abdomen of a honeybee does not stop the animal’s feeding. If the head of a blow-fly (Phormia) is cut off, it nevertheless stretches its tubular feeding organ (proboscis) and begins to suck if its chemoreceptors (labellae) are brought in touch with a sugar solution; the ingested solution simply flows out at the severed neck.

At any rate, responsiveness to mechanical deformation is a basic property of living matter; even a one-celled organism such as an amoeba shows withdrawal responses to touch. The evolutionary course of mechanoreception in the development of such complex functions as gravity detection and sound-wave reception leaves much room for speculation and scholarly disagreement.

Reception of external mechanical stimuli

Sensitivity to direct tactual stimulation—i.e., to contact with relatively solid objects (tangoreception)—is found quite generally, from one-celled organisms up to and including man. Usually the whole body surface is tangoreceptive, except for parts covered by thick, rigid shells (as in mollusks). Mechanical contact locally deforms the body surface; receptors typically are touch spots or free nerve endings within the skin, often associated with such specialized structures as tactile hairs. The skin area served by one nerve fibre (or sensory unit) is called a receptive field, although such fields overlap considerably. Particularly sensitive, exposed body parts are sometimes called organs of touch—e.g., the tentacles of the octopus, the beak of the sandpiper, the snout of the pig, or the human hand.

Stimulation of the human skin with a bristle reveals that touch (pressure) sensation is evoked only from certain spots. These pressure spots, especially those on hairless parts (e.g., palm of the hand, or sole of the foot), are associated with specialized microscopic structures (corpuscles) in the skin. Pressure spots are most densely concentrated on the tip of the human tongue (about 200 of them per square centimetre, or 1,300 per square inch), roughly twice their concentration at the fingertip. A characteristic feature of many tactile sense organs is their rapid and complete adaptation (i.e., temporary loss of sensitivity) when stimulated. Still, in man a distinction can be made between transient and more prolonged pressure sensations.

Relatively little research has been done with regard to the physiology of individual tangoreceptors in vertebrates. The Pacinian corpuscle of higher vertebrates, however, has been studied in isolation. These corpuscles, found under the skin, are scattered within the body, particularly around muscles and joints. Local pressure exerted at the surface or within the body causes deformation of parts of the corpuscle, a shift of chemical ions (e.g., sodium, potassium), and the appearance of a receptor potential at the nerve ending. This receptor potential, on reaching sufficient (threshold) strength, acts to generate a nerve impulse within the corpuscle. Among insects, movements of tactile hairs have been shown (sometimes specifically) to affect the receptor potential and the impulse frequency in the connected nerve fibre.

Many vertebrates and invertebrates can localize with some precision points of tactual stimulation at the body surface. People typically can still distinguish two sharpened pencil points, or similar pointed stimuli, when the points are separated by as little as about one millimetre (0.04 inch) at the tip of the tongue. (When moved closer together, the two points are perceived as one.) The human two-point threshold is about two millimetres at the finger tip, reaching six or seven centimetres (2.4–2.8 inches) at the skin of the back. Such tactual ability serves blind people when they read raised type (Braille) with their fingers. Closely related functions include the ability to distinguish between tactile stimuli that differ qualitatively; for example, between a rough and a smooth surface. This ability is even observable in the ciliate Stylonychia (a one-celled relative of Paramecium).

Sensory contact with the ground below often informs animals about their spatial position. Nocturnal animals (for example, some eels) find shelter during the day by keeping as much of their skin as possible in contact with solid objects in the surroundings (thigmotaxis). Animals that live in running water usually maintain their position as they turn and swim head-on against the current (rheotaxis). Study of rheotaxic behaviour reveals that the sensory basis almost exclusively depends on visual or tactile stimuli (or both) arising from the animal’s movements relative to the solid bottom or surroundings. The long antennae of many arthropods (e.g., crayfish) and the lengthened tactile hairs (vibrissae) on the snouts of nocturnally active mammals (e.g., cat, rat) serve in tactually sensing objects in the vicinity of the animal’s body, extending and enriching the adaptive function of the sense of touch.

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